Dr Nishant A.Irudayadason
Professor of Philosophy and Ethics, Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune

The consortium of journalists Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International on Sunday 18 July 2021 revealed the Pegasus scandal. This software, designed by the Israeli computer company NSO, would allow, from a simple phone number, to access all the content of the owner of the phone, his emails, his photos, his notes… With more than 50,000 phone numbers identified as potential targets to watch, this case promises to be one of the biggest cyber-spying scandals. Unfortunately, this is not the first case of its kind. Just recall the huge thunderclap caused by Snowden in 2013, when he denounced the massive collection of data from major platforms such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, etc. to monitor global communications on a large scale.
With Pegasus, it is no longer a question of pointing the finger at one country or another for its extraordinary surveillance practices, but of noting that cyber surveillance is now reaching unprecedented proportions. Several States operate at the same time. By equipping themselves with this software, their objective, under the official guise of the fight against terrorism and crime, would be to monitor the actions of men and women to better neutralize them and, in turn, to identify and control all those who collaborate with them. In short, it is a very effective way to suppress or muzzle cumbersome opponents, more particularly and unsurprisingly by targeting politicians, human rights defenders and conscientious journalists.
Spying dates back to ancient times, from Egypt to ancient Rome, kings and emperors have always had informants. What changes in the 2021 version is the ease with which such intrusive devices now seem to be able to be introduced, remotely thousands of kilometres away, completely without the knowledge of the victims. What is also changing is that espionage at this level of sophistication is now accessible to actors other than states – large corporations in particular, paving the way for new political balances. Whether used by authoritarian states or by private actors, these devices are “out of control” and our individual freedoms thus continue to dissolve in the digital sphere. The State has just demonstrated that it can no longer be the guarantor of defence and national security. It manages neither to protect itself nor to protect its people. It is a clear violation of human right since the protection of privacy was affirmed in 1948 by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Art. 12).
The effectiveness of whistle-blowers is remarkable for without them there would have been no investigation. In terms of economic intelligence – and companies are well aware of this – the fight against the plundering of data, trade secrets, know-how, patents, etc. goes through the label of compliance and the implementation of safety protocols. Let’s no longer forget in the process to extend the scope of control to IT tools for both professional and private use, as well as “BYOD” tools (bring your own device), these private tools that can be used within the company, for example and above all, smartphones. Clearly, cybersecurity must finally become everyone’s business, a priority at all levels, at all times, a present and permanent awareness, at individual, national and global level.
There may be legal consequences in the Pegasus case in India. The Supreme Court, which on 05 August 2021 was considering nine petitions from journalists, lawyers and members of parliament whose phones were allegedly spied on by government security agencies. The applicants request an independent investigation supervised by a current or retired judge. The magistrates convened a new hearing on 10 August 2021, this time in the presence of a government representative. The establishment of a commission of inquiry would be a mark of independence assumed by the new head of India’s highest court, N.V. Ramana, who took office in April. A few weeks ago, the magistrate had already surprised by asking the government to review the sedition law, a legacy of the British colonial era, widely used by the authorities to imprison citizens and opponents without trial. Politically, the Pegasus affair has already produced an unexpected effect of uniting the scattered opposition. Never since the present government’s re-election in 2019, has the opposition spoken with one voice despite the severe blows on democracy and secularism.